Globalizing science

Category archives for Globalizing science

In the July 18, 2008 issue of Science, I noticed a news item, “Old Samples Trip Up Tokyo Team”: A University of Tokyo team has retracted a published research paper because it apparently failed to obtain informed consent from tissue donors or approval from an institutional review board (IRB). Other papers by the same group…

In an earlier post, I looked at a research study by Nelson et al. [1] on how the cognitive development of young abandoned children in Romania was affected by being raised in institutional versus foster care conditions. Specifically, I examined the explanation the researchers gave to argue that their work was not only scientifically sound…

The Neurocritic alerted me, in a comment on an earlier post, to a pair of papers in the 21 December 2007 issue of Science that raise some difficult ethical questions about what sorts of research are permissible. Quoth the Neurocritic: This may be a little off-topic, but I was wondering if you read this article…

The One Laptop Per Child program’s Give One Get One promotion (which I blogged about back in November) has been extended through the end of December 31 (today!!). If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, for $399 ($200 of which is tax deductible) you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a…

I just found out about something cool for which the window of opportunity closes in eleven days: Through November 26, the One Laptop Per Child project has a Give One Get One deal (in the U.S. and Canada) wherein you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a child in a developing…

In the July 16 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (secure behind a paywall), the article “FBI Reaches Out to Campuses” [1] caught my attention. The gist of it is that academic scientists are increasingly the targets of foreign espionage, where the stakes have less to do with national security than potentially huge economic losses.…

Almost a year ago, I learned about the case of the Tripoli six, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician in Libya sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV despite the fact that the best scientific evidence indicated that the children were infected due to negligence in the hospital well before these…

Only a few days out from the 19 December verdict in the Tripoli 6 case, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the Bush administration honestly couldn’t be bothered that Libya shows every sign of being ready to execute foreign healthcare workers who the scientific evidence indicates did not commit the crime with…

You may remember the plight of the Tripoli Six (also known as the Benghazi Six), the physician and five nurses on trial in Libya for infecting 400 children in the hospital where they were working with HIV even though there is overwhelming evidence that the most likely route of infection was poor hospital hygeine, probably…

As Revere notes, the trial of the Tripoli six is scheduled to resume on October 31. This means the time for serious action is now. As Mike Dunford points out, If you want to do something more than just get mad, if you want to try to change things, you will need to do more…